It’s great to give thanks to the opportunities and the people we have in our lives!

I wonder if the gratitude theme has gotten a bit out of hand. Has it gotten to the level to where we go through the motions and just write down or say a bunch of things we are grateful for now without actually truly internalizing these wonders we have around us?

I’m sure it still has some effect and I’m not saying if you have created a great gratitude habit that you should stop. Keep that rocking as there will be benefits without a doubt.

As I laid my head down on my pillow Sunday night, I said out loud to my wife as she was reading her book, “a lot to be grateful for”.

For me at that moment it had a deeper meaning. We had just gotten home from spending a few days at my mother in laws where we did a lot of chatting, a lot of eating, played a lot of games, and even got a chance to create a new video with my niece and son at a MN State Park.

What a great weekend it was!

It didn’t start out that way for me. As we were heading there on Black Friday, I had a melancholy feeling that had creeped into my soul. I get like that every now and again where I allow the random pressures of life to get the best of me and I start to have feelings of dread, despair, and anxiety.

It gives me a glimpse into the world of people who have a severe case of mental illness or depression. Those states of being can be absolutely crippling and there is not very many things that can snap you out if it.

What did snap me out of it?

1.) A change of scenery

It’s easy to get in ruts where we are being chewed up in the grind of life. Sometimes just changing where you do certain activities is exactly what the doctor ordered.

2.) The who

There are also times that one person can snap you out of a funk. Heading to my in laws with different people to interact with and chat with was just enough to move me out of that feeling.

Perspective is such an amazing teacher and can also be a fantastic reminder. It’s easy to get lost in the unimportant and completely trivial. When you think about it, most of what we worry about is 100% completely unimportant and trivial and yet we allow ourselves to get all worked up.

Last night in the darkness, I thought about the feeling you have when you get put under before you are going to have surgery. Things just go black and next thing you know you are waking up. No dreams, no thoughts, just black.

Then I started playing the what if game. What if that is how it ends? Let’s leave out all religious beliefs here for a moment and just ponder.

If that’s the case, then all these things we really worried about and made a big deal over would be so stupid.

A few of my in laws happen to be atheists which I find intriguing.

The most interesting part of what an atheist believes, is the fact that they literally think that their journey on this earth is a one way ticket. This is all they got.

It reminds me of the quote “You have one life and as long as you do it right, that’s all you need”.

Perspective.

There is a photo that Carl Sagan made famous called the Pale Blue Dot. It’s a picture taken from a satellite heading out of our galaxy. In it shows the vastness and millions of suns and planets in our galaxy and he circles this tiny speck of dust on the photo that happens to be our planet.

Sagan states, “every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived here- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”

It’s amazing how fairly insignificant we look from that point of view.

Then we have the tenacity to worry about a stain on our nice shirt or having people see the spinach stuck in your teeth all night while you were at a party.

The cool opportunity that the Pale Blue Dot can teach us is the fact that we do have a clear purpose that some forget. It’s to keep making an impact in small ways so that our future can thrive and our kids, kids, kids, kids, can explore that wonderful galaxy.

We have to be amazing stewards to our kin, to our earth, to our own personal learning and growth and put aside the frivolous and fool hardy ventures like worrying about what others think, or thinking that failing is a bad thing.

We have a serious responsibility to make sure our future generations understand that whether you believe in an afterlife or not, there is a chance we only got one shot so we better make it count.

You better make sure you take plenty of moments of depth with your loved ones and take plenty of time off to enjoy this little speck in the Universe. Share all your little nuggets of wisdom with everyone around you. That’s what makes us humans extremely unique. It’s the fact that we have the power to be a more singular consciousness where we truly all achieve more together.

The more we can think of each other as allies versus enemies, the closer we are getting to achieving joy, fulfillment, and massive amounts of advancement without worrying about that stain or piece of spinach in your teeth.

We are in charge of what we make significant or not and being aware of those is the ultimate goal.

Stay frosty and grind on!

For more JUICY content, check out our podcast at grindpodcast.com where discuss the GRIND of life and all that it has to offer! Feel free to subscribe!